It may be Don’s story, but ex-wife Betty ran away with this episode – and that was grand. First if not foremost, consider Betty and her chafing dish, her menu of crab louie on toast points, rumaki and little franks with bbq sauce: a walking dictionary of ’50s nostalgia, right there uncomfortably located in the ’60s. Betty and second husband Henry (“Leave the thinking to me!”) are a snapshot of what was sexist, stuffy and outmoded in the Nixon era. Betty is getting tired of being pushed around (“I’m not stupid, I speak Italian.”) While daughter Sally sees the depressing truth of their sad lives. Betty is furious that Sally may have broken her nose, her best and maybe only gift to her daughter.

At the office, the hum of the new computer is driving Ginsberg crazy. Literally. Something has pushed him over the edge, may as well blame it on the machine. (“That machine, it came for us!” “Get out while you can!”) The shot of Lou and Jim talking, allowing only lip-reading, was a nice nod to HAL9000. Lou reveals his cartoon sideline, and calls his underlings “flag-burning snots.”

What goes around comes around — on a carousel, no less. Calling back to Don Draper’s most sentimental pitch for Kodak, Sunday night’s “Mad Men” episode finds Don hitting bottom while a computer the size of two men — the “monolith” of the title — displaces the creative team in the office and shakes up the place. The scary yet bright future is here; it’s that “construction and installation” require hard hats.

“The machine can be a metaphor for whatever’s on people’s minds,” the IBM 360 leasing agent tells Don. It’s God-like, now that man has “mastered the infinite.” The computer can do magical things, Roger jokes, like make Harry Crane seem important.

Harry Hamlin as Jim Cutler, Christina Hendricks as Joan Harris and Robert Morse as Bertram Cooper in The Field Trip. (Photo by Michael Yarish, AMC)

Sunday night’s “Mad Men” hour (season 7, episode 3, “Field Trip”) was more active that last week’s slow, almost stagnant hour. The “Field Trip” episode is about getting away from the day-to-day to better appreciate what’s up. In Don’s case it’s about humiliations paired with nasty, cutting words. “I can’t say that we missed you,” Peggy offers when Don shows up at the office. And there’s an undercurrent of self pity: Harry and his sideburns begging for better technology; Megan under a dark cloud even in sunny L.A.; Betty the unfit mother.

Don has trouble loving or needing people, but he realizes he loves and needs work. He needs work so much he agrees to go back with all kinds of stipulations — he mustn’t be alone with clients, he must stick to the agreed upon script, no drinking in the office, and he’ll report to the stiff and humorless Lou.

“Okay,” he says simply.

Cue Jimi Hendrix: “If 6 was 9.” You know, “If the sun refused to shine, I don’t mind.” Check the lyrics, point on Mister Businessman. How long will this humiliation last? The teaser for the coming installment suggests the next crisis will spring Don back into action.Read more…

The 2013 Golden Globe nominations released this morning pose an array of questions, but they weren’t as wildly unpredictable as usual. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is known for its inscrutable picks. Leave dissection of the movie noms to others; the TV categories were mostly as expected, with a couple of glaring omissions.

“Orange is the New Black” was left out of the best series nominations (maybe because it was entered by Netflix as a drama and it’s really a tragicom/dramedy). “Mad Men” was snubbed entirely. Again. (True, it didn’t enjoy its best season, but really?) “Downton Abbey,” a period piece that had a rough season in terms of storytelling, landed a best series nomination ahead of “Homeland,” “The Americans,” “Mad Men” “Game of Thrones” and “OITNB.”

At least they included the obvious names in the best actor and best actress categories. Hayden Panettiere and Jon Voight are leading contenders for their supporting roles (“Nashville” and “Ray Donovan,” respectively). Glad to see Michael Sheen in the running for his turn as the brittle, egomaniacal Dr. Masters on “Masters of Sex,” but Lizzy Caplan should have had the slot occupied by Sophia Vergara.

The TV categories:
Best TV series, drama
Breaking Bad
Downton Abbey
The Good Wife
House of Cards
Masters of Sex

Best Actress in a TV series, drama
Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife
Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black
Taylor Schilling, Orange is the New Black
Kerry Washington, Scandal
Robin Wright, House of Cards

“Bates Motel,” “The Americans,” CBS’ “The Good Wife” and “Breaking Bad” should be in the mix. While some fans believe “Downton Abbey” deserves a nod, the writing wasn’t as sharp as the period set decor. “Boardwalk Empire” is eligible but better picks would be “Justified,” which more consistently hits high notes overall, and the fantasy epic “Game of Thrones,” which has successfully transcended the genre to become a mass-appeal hit. Longer-shot possibilities include “Nashville” and “The Newsroom,” but they don’t belong in the same tier as, say, “Breaking Bad.”

Emmy voters are often suckers for movie stars on the small screen, and this year that means Kevin Spacey and Kevin Bacon could nab nominations, for “House of Cards” and “The Following,” respectively. Spacey is more deserving. Meanwhile we’ll watch for Netflix to make some noise as its original series “House of Cards” and “Arrested Development” elbow into the race.

On the comedy side, ABC’s “Modern Family” will defend its title as three-time winner. I’d like to see “Girls,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Louie” and that neglected favorite, “Episodes,” win nominations. “30 Rock” and “Veep” are possible contenders, both coming off uneven seasons. “Arrested Development,” despite its rabid fan base, didn’t live up to expectations; Fox’s “New Girl” wouldn’t be my choice but it’s a long shot, same for NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” an acquired taste.

Spoilers ahead. Don’t read until you’ve seen the action-packed season 6 finale of “Mad Men.”
From fetal position in the penultimate episode last week to exiting hat in hand this week, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) arrived at the end of this season’s downward spiral fresh out of lies. The wholly fabricated man is out of options. The alienation of his protege Peggy wasn’t enough. The loss of friends and family wasn’t enough. A night in the drunk tank wasn’t enough. The idea of being caught by daughter Sally not just coveting but having relations with his neighbor’s wife, that wasn’t enough. Ironically, when the only thing left for him was to tell the truth, he did–and his life imploded.

Now he’s out of excuses, out of advertising, out of the closet in terms of his lurid past. In a beautiful play on the Kodak Carousel pitch he delivered in season 1, he delivered a poetic ode to Hershey’s, in which his loving father tousled his hair as a youth and expressed his love through a chocolate bar. But his shaking hand reminded him he was lost. When he divulged his history in a meeting with the Hershey’s execs, telling them he was in fact an orphan raised in a whorehouse, and later drove his three over-indulged kids to witness the “bad neighborhood” and ramshackle home where he grew up, he took a surprising step toward integrating his fractured identity. Credible drama? Perhaps not. But it was a powerful Dickensian turn. Don Draper revealed as Dick Whitman.

First let’s agree that the latest episode of “Mad Men,” titled “The Crash,” will stand as one of the weirdest.

Not only did the staff of SCDP line up and drop trou for “energy shots,” purportedly enhanced super-vitamin hits intended to get them through a weekend of creativity for the Chevy account. They variously tap-danced with a cane, had sex in the office, experienced whorehouse flashbacks and played William Tell with an Exacto blade. Meanwhile a stranger showed up (“Grandma Ida”) to rob the Draper apartment, leading to one of the funniest lines of the season: Bobby Draper asking re. the elderly black female burglar posing as grandma, “Are we Negroes?”

Conscious and subconscious, text and subtext merged in an extended phantasmagorical riff. Don left the apartment door open. Don begged Sylvia not to close the metaphorical door on their illicit relationship. Don had a breakthrough in his creative push for Chevy, opening new doors. Reflecting on a soup account from the 1950s, Don has an epiphany. But isn’t the woman in the ad a lookalike for the woman who took his virginity in the whorehouse flashback? Isn’t the secretary Don spies when coming down the stairs as the speed kicks in a ringer for the same woman?

And did anyone feel invested enough in the character of Frank to be moved by his demise? At the end of the night, it felt like the supernatural fiction of “Game of Thrones” was more rooted in reality than the rough historical fiction of “Mad Men.” In fact, even as it worked across cultures and veered into zombie territory, “GOT” demonstrated better, more coherent storytelling.

Ready for a TV marathon? Are you still behind the curve on “The Wire”? Comcast’s Xfinity TV is running a free catch-up “Watchathon Week” today through March 31, offering some 3,500 episodes of 100 TV series across 30 premium, cable and broadcast networks.

Among the series available: “Downton Abbey,” “Game Of Thrones,” “Dexter,” “Girls,” “Spartacus,” “Mad Men,” “Dexter,” “Revolution,” “The Walking Dead,” “Touch,” “Chicago Fire,” “Parenthood,” and “The Americans.” Plus some older series you may have missed, like “The Sopranos,” “Sex And The City” and “The Wire.” Programming will be available at Xfinity.com/tv, the Xfinity TV Player App for Apple and Android devices, and Xfinity Streampix as well as the VOD service for subscribers.

The goal is twofold. Comcast wants to show viewers an alternative to Netflix while at the same time demonstrating to networks that its video on demand service is more friend than foe.

The Golden Globes TV nominations, often baffling, useful mainly for setting up a big televised party for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, on Thursday offered a surprising, positive note: namely “Episodes,” the Showtime comedy, got a deserved nod. If only they’d substituted “Louie,” the smart, poignant, funny and subversive comedy, for “Smash,” the ambitious but over-indulgent misfire, in the best musical/comedy category.

Among the other oddities, the snub of “Mad Men,” giving “Newsroom” a slot in the best drama category instead. Really, the writing and casting of “Mad Men” is so far superior, even in a not-great season, there should be no contest. And no “Game of Thrones”? Come on!

They include a few fresh faces and firsts: the broadcast networks were shut out of the best drama category, which is owned by cable (AMC’s “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad,” HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” “Game of Thrones” and Showtime’s “Homeland”) and PBS (for “Downton Abbey”). “Homeland” is a welcome addition to the list.

In the best drama actress lineup only Julianna Marguiles and Kathy Bates broke into the ranks overshadowed by cable. Only Hugh Bonneville (“Downton Abbey”) joined the best actor nominees, ruled by cable.

Last year’s winners “Mad Men” and “Modern Family” continued to garner multiple nominations (17 and 14, respectively). Newcomer “Girls” got some Emmy love, Zooey Deschanel got a first-time nod for her role in “New Girl” and Julie Louis-Dreyfus entered the best comedy actress category for “Veep.”

HBO remained the most-nominated network, with 81, but the gap wasn’t as glaring as last year when HBO garnered more than double the second-place finisher, CBS.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.